There is a need to control non-productive plant growth around productive plants. This is especially so when the productive plants are in an early stage and the non-productive plants may otherwise crowd or compete with the productive plant for space, sunlight, moisture and nutrients. Also reducing non-productive plant presence and growth increases the purity of harvested product as unwanted plant species and content is reduced or removed.
In addition it is desirable to keep soil about the plant in a particular state, for example around the base of the plant to protect and support it.
Traditionally the solution to these problems was to hand weed around the furrows and rows of the plants. This was accurate and being done by a human would allow for correct identification between producing and non-producing species. The human, even using a tool, was then skilled enough to extract or cover the non-producing species and leave the producing species undamaged. This would also move surrounding soil where it was needed.
However, human based solutions while accurate are time and labour intensive.
Weeding using tools is preferable and mandatory for some crops during or toward their final growth stage. Therefore weed-killer spraying, even spot or targeted spraying can be undesirable. Further such spraying does not condition and move the soil in the beneficial ways that weeding using tools can.
Automated solutions have also been developed—mainly these use spray or mechanical systems, which have the disadvantages already discussed.
Automated systems that use mechanical weeding are known. However these tend to use optical sensing and pattern recognition to activate the weeding system. Optical based systems, quite apart from the significant programming required and sensitive equipment present, also need a continuous quality power supply and are sensitive to fluctuations in that supply. Other systems utilise GPS technology. However, this requires not only a very accurate and sophisticated GPS system, but also the exact GPS location of each plant to then activate the weeding for each individual plant.
It would therefore be desirable to achieve a solution to these problems using a mechanised approach, which reduces the time and labour component but keeps the accuracy and does not damage the producing species nor the environment.
In this specification where reference has been made to patent specifications, other external documents, or other sources of information, this is generally for the purpose of providing a context for discussing the features of the invention. Unless specifically stated otherwise, reference to such external documents is not to be construed as an admission that such documents, or such sources of information, in any jurisdiction, are prior art, or form part of the common general knowledge in the art.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved plant maintenance system, method and apparatus, or to overcome the above shortcomings or address the above desiderata, or to at least provide the public with a useful choice.